This work investigated the association of acute ethanol and aminophylline administration on behavioral models of depression and prefrontal monoamine levels (i.e. norepinephrine and dopamine) in mice. The animals received a single dose of ethanol (2 g/kg) or aminophylline (5 or 10 mg/kg) alone or in association. Thirty minutes after the last drug administration, the animals were assessed in behavioral models by the forced swimming and tail suspension tests. After these tests, the animals were sacrificed and the prefrontal cortices dissected to measure monoamine content. Results showed that ethanol presented depression-like activity in the forced swimming and tail suspension tests. These effects were reversed by the association with aminophylline in all tests. Norepinephrine and dopamine levels decreased, while an increase in the dopamine metabolite, (4-hydroxy-3-methoxyphenyl)acetic acid (DOPAC), after ethanol administration was observed. On the contrary, the association of ethanol and aminophylline increased the norepinephrine and dopamine content, while it decreased DOPAC when compared to the ethanol group, confirming the alterations observed in the behavioral tests. These data reinforce the involvement of the adenosinergic system on ethanol effects, highlighting the importance of the norepinephrine and dopamine pathways in the prefrontal cortex to the effects of ethanol. HubMed – depression

To be or Not to be Threatening, but What was the Question? Biased Face Evaluation in Social Anxiety and Depression Depends on How You Frame the Query.

Scientific evidence is equivocal on whether Social Anxiety Disorder (SAD) is characterized by a biased negative evaluation of facial expressions, even though it is assumed that such a bias plays a crucial role in the maintenance of the disorder. The way of framing the evaluation question may play an important role in the inconsistencies of earlier results. To investigate this issue, an unselected sample of 95 participants (11 males) with varying degrees of social anxiety and depressive symptoms rated facial crowds with different ratios of neutral-disgust, neutral-sad, neutral-happy, and neutral-surprised expressions in terms of friendliness, approval, difficulty to make contact, and threat. It appeared that the impact of social anxiety on ratings was highly dependent on the type of question that was asked, but not on the type of emotion that was shown: a high degree of social anxiety was related to a more positive evaluation of crowds when friendliness was assessed. When asking about the difficulty to make contact, social anxiety was related to more difficulty. When the threat evoked by a crowd had to be evaluated, higher degrees of social anxiety were tendentiously correlated with higher threat ratings. Degree of depression, on the other hand, was negatively correlated only to approval ratings. In addition, with an increasing degree of depression, the negative impact that any additional emotional face had on approval ratings increased as well. The theoretical and methodological implications of the results are discussed. HubMed – depression

Female vulnerability to the development of depression-like behavior in a rat model of intimate partner violence is related to anxious temperament, coping responses, and amygdala vasopressin receptor 1a expression.

Exposure to violence is traumatic and an important source of mental health disturbance, yet the factors associated with victimization remain incompletely understood. The aim of the present study was to investigate factors related to vulnerability to depression-like behaviors in females. An animal model of intimate partner violence, which was previously shown to produce long-lasting behavioral effects in females as a result of male partner aggression, was used. The associations among the degree of partner aggression, the long-term consequences on depressive-like behavior, and the impact of the anxious temperament of the female were examined. In a separate group, pre-selected neural markers were evaluated in the amygdala and the lateral septum of females. Expression was examined by analyses of targeted candidate genes, serotonin transporter (slc6a4), vasopressin receptor 1a, (avpr1a), and oxytocin receptor (oxtr). Structural equation modeling revealed that the female’s temperament moderated depressive-like behavior that was induced by cohabitation aggression from the male partner. More specifically, increased floating in the forced swim test following male aggression was most apparent in females exhibiting more anxiety-like behavior (i.e., less open arm exploration in an elevated plus-maze) prior to the cohabitation. Aggression reduced slc6a4 levels in the lateral septum. However, the interaction between partner aggression and the anxious temperament of the female affected the expression of avpr1a in the amygdala. Although, aggression reduced levels of this marker in females with high anxiety, no such pattern was observed in females with low anxiety. These results identify important characteristics in females that moderate the impact of male aggression. Furthermore, these results provide potential therapeutic targets of interest in the amygdala and the lateral septum to help improve post-stress behavioral pathology and increase resilience to social adversity. HubMed – depression